Community Film Screening of "We Are In It" a film by Yehuda Sharim

"We Are In It" chronicles the stories and journeys of five Houston residents and their attempt to find refuge in this American metropolis. By combining tales of deportation with everyday defeats and resilience, it identifies what lies beneath the surface of migrant and refugee realities and the unsettling need to move towards political and economic security. The film documents their personal archives – poetry and paintings of Baghdad, film clips of the Burmese diaspora, songs in Swahili – and their efforts to re-envisage a home amidst experiences of trivialized war, hardship, and alienation.

Filmed over a period of two years, this feature-length documentary combines intimate portraiture with epic narrative. This piece traces their daily experiences, and reveals the subtleties of despair, hope, and irony, in an intensified political climate regarding global migration and the militarization of borders.The film comprises a grand panorama of American life in a time where the movement across borders in search of safety is part of an ongoing experience that does not end with the arrival to USA. "We Are In It", finally, tells the paradoxical story of placement and displacement, an ever-morphing tale that does not consist of clear points of entry or departure.